


Rescue

by shauds



Series: Comfortember2020 [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Blue Devil (DCU Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Comfortember, DC Comics Rebirth, Gen, Hell, Major Character Death isn't permanent, Post-Heroes in Crisis (DCU), Rescue, the outlaws dreamteam, this is dc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:48:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27310693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shauds/pseuds/shauds
Summary: It only took a second for Eddie to die, what's happening after is taking a whole lot longer. Turns out he didn't really have to wait for his twentieth birthday to get into Hell.Turns out there are people he's never met, but who remember him from another universe would rather he NOT be in hell.Or, Rose remembers the Post-Crisis continuity and drags Jason and his magical swords along to rescue her best friend from Hell after Rebirth went and killed Eddie too.
Relationships: Eddie Bloomberg & Jason Todd, Eddie Bloomberg & Jason Todd & Rose Wilson, Eddie Bloomberg & Rose Wilson, Jason Todd & Rose Wilson
Series: Comfortember2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993963
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54
Collections: Comfortember 2020





	Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> My take on how my Outlaws dream team could happen in the current continuity, and also my very first time using the current continuity in one of my works. So the character's might be a little different than how I usually write them.  
> I still hate everything about heroes in crisis and refuse to acknowledge anything but the broad strokes that are absolutely necessary for this story to work.

Sometimes his hands are the bloody red they'd been after his deal, sometimes the freckled peach they'd been before. Flashes of fire that could be his, or not spark in and out of his field of vision. Nothing's the same, everything constantly shifting before he can get a grasp of what it is.

Hell, even though he'd come here when he'd made the deal that wound up sending him here the second time, had been an almost abstract concept for Eddie. He'd never thought that'd fall through, couldn't even envision a world where he didn't trust Dan anymore. Turned out all the talk by his Aunt about how smart Eddie was had been lies or maybe she'd she'd just greatly misjudged him.

Eddie doesn't know how long he's been here, he finds himself wondering sometimes, when he isn't wandering these barren, smokey plains instead, whether knowing would make it easier or harder. Time doesn't feel the same, almost nothing feels the same down here anymore. The ground doesn't burn his bare feet like it used to, the screams of people who might be nearby, but Eddie's never gotten the chance to see, the sweeping expanse of smokey emptiness all about him.

The only thing that does feel the same is the blunt agony of energy snapping into him, knocking him from his feet when he'd been… had he been gardening? It didn't matter, whatever it was that had picked him up had set him down here, it's still digging into him, it still hurts just as much as it did in that moment. Here, where he isn't even sure if he's moving at all or when, what he's moving towards or moving away from.

"… all your fault." A voice whispers louder than an atom bomb, it rushes towards him like a material thing.

It doesn't need to do that, Eddie knows it's his fault.

"Shut up Jason." Another replies, this one lighter, still hushed, still too loud.

Eddie's face scrunches up and he realizes his eyes have been closed. They burn when he opens them, and all he gets to see for all the trouble is the same barren world as always, only now it's constant movement is a little less disconcerting. Or maybe he's just used to it. He huffs, the action scratching at his parched throat.

"He agrees with me." The lighter voice whispers again, barely audible over the screams.

"He's biased." The deeper grumbles and Eddie feels himself shift. "Doesn't make it any less your fault."

The whispers aren't screaming, the nails scraping against his scalp when a hand runs through his hair don't burn.

What's going on here? Hot Damn he's tired. Whatever, it's not like things will change much if Eddie takes his first nap in…

*******

When Eddie comes too, there's humming, a cheerful tune that makes him think of crowded spaces and flashing lights. He feels… well, he wouldn't say he feels even more tired than he had before he'd fallen asleep to start off with, but that was a kind of tired he'd had plenty of time to settle into, it was familiar. Now he was just exhausted.

He shifts, gravel digging into the palms of his hands, something smooth and soft under his cheek. Other than that, he feels almost numb, the frayed nerves something else he's gotten so used to he hadn't felt them in so long.

He groans and the humming stops.

"Eddie?" A soft voice speaks his name.

There's scraping and Eddie feels a figure hovering above him.

His eyes crack open to olive skin framed by pale gray curls, a red sky in the distance, one steel colored eye looking down on him anxiously, pretty. Another face joins hers shortly this one paler, the hair darker… he's not as pretty.

Eddie closes his eyes to an affronted huff and loud, boisterous chuckles.

"Don't worry Jason, I'm sure there are **some** people who think you're pretty."

"Shut up Rose."

*******

Eddie's more aware the next time. When he sits up, the screams are so far away that they've blended with the shrill winds. The soft object he'd had by his head turns out to be a wadded up, sleeveless red hoodie someone had rolled into a makeshift pillow and tucked under his aching head.

"Look who's joined us in the land of the… dead, actually... I guess." The flippant voice startles Eddie and his head cracks to the source.

"Who..." Eddie swallows dryly and the man sitting propped against the entrance to the low structure they're under scoffs and gets up.

"Eddie!" This one comes from behind and soon there are arms wrapped tightly around him. His first instinct is to push her off, warn her to get back before his skin burns her, but then she's already let go, and when he turns to see her, she's smiling at him despite the light singe on her orange vest.

"Here." The man offer's Eddie flask and he doesn't hesitate in grabbing it, "Slowly," the man warns gripping it to keep Eddie from upending the whole thing on himself as he drinks. It's warm, and it tastes like iron but as far as Eddie's concerned it's best drink he's had in his entire life.

"How are you feeling?" The girl asks when Eddie's finished the water down to the last drop.

"I'm…" Eddie's voice feels rough, foreign to him, and so he clears his throat, "I'm in Hell?"

" **We're** in Hell." The man corrects, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the… well, at the Hellscape behind him.

"Am I dead?" Eddie asks, "Or… twenty?"

The woman behind him snorts and the man makes a face like Eddie has just insulted his entire existence, it's too playful to be genuine and it makes Eddie smile, before it occurs to him that, "Who are you?" If he's in Hell, then who is he here with? "Why are you guys with me?

The woman's flinch of far form playful, the look on her face approaching anguish.

"This is Rose." The man's says, an apologetic smile in place as he briefly rests his hand on her shoulder. "If you believe her, you guys were friends before some pseudo apocalypse that rewrote reality or some shit." He then waves a hand between him and Eddie. "We might have been too, but I don't remember much of it. I'm pretty much a pack mule far as she's concerned." He holds the hand out to Eddie. "Jason."

"At least you're finally being useful to society." The woman rolls her eye while Eddie scrutinizes the hand - he's already made a deal with one demon, and he's not in any rush to do it again - and very deliberately doesn't look at his own clawed hand, colored in a mottled pattern of peach and red, like some modern art display, she has a sharp smile in the place, only the lingering dregs of hurt visible in her features. The more Eddie looks at her, the more something pangs deep inside, something that really wants her to seem familiar. "You'll be back with your little monsters soon enough."

"Don't call my kids that, they're angels." Jason growls at her, but there's no bite in it. He catches Eddie watching and side eyes him with a smile. "The most innocent little things on the face of the Earth.

"You have kids?" Eddie looks Jason over, maybe it's just because he doesn't look all that much older than Eddie, and sure there are a bunch of people even younger than Eddie with kids, this feels… different somehow.

"Eh, students, minionlings, kids," he flops his hand as if dismissing the subject, "Do we really need to define these things?"

"They're probably waiting to take my head off the second the three of us crawl out of here." Rose wrinkles her nose.

"A fate befitting a kidnapper." Jason's smile shows nothing but pride. "Don't worry Gopher, you can…"

"Gopher?" Eddie repeats the nickname he hasn't heard directed at him since he'd walked away from Dan so long ago.

"Uh." Jason blinks, he looks as confused as Eddie before he shakes it off. "Yeah, uh, cause we're in the ground?" He mutters something to himself that Eddie doesn't catch. "Anyway, I was saying we can find space for you."

"Who the fuck wants to live with you and your minionlings, Hood." Rose punches Jason's arm.

"Everybody wants to live with me, I'm the pancake master, and like I said before, you want in, you gotta learn to watch the language."

"You're one to talk."

"Wait, wait, wait." Eddie tries to sit up straighter, but suddenly the world is swimming, that exhaustion from before hasn't left him and he winds up being caught by Rose before he winds up a crumpled mess on the floor.

"Easy, Eddie," Rose says gently as she lowers Eddie back down to his makeshift pillow. "Don't want you to zombie out on us again before we get out of here."

"Out of Hell out of here?" Eddie asks, unable to keep the hope out of his voice despite the improbability, people have gotten out of hell before, they've even come back to life, it wasn't impossible.

"That's the idea." Jason's digging through a leathery pack. "Don't get your hopes up on it happening any time soon, though, someone used our transport as a battering ram and now we're stuck walking all the way up to the dark, condensation of all things evil scented gates."

"I'm sure you would have had great luck riding that thing out of here dead, you jack…" Rose says, drawing Eddie's attention back to her, back to how close she'd sitting to him.

"You, you're not…" Eddie has to stop to suck in breath, but it doesn't ease the painful clenching of his chest or stop the prickling of his eyes. "You guys aren't just doing this to mess with me, right? You're really…"

"We're your friends, Eddie." Rose pushes Eddie's hair from his face, she's looking at him in a way no one has since before his relationship with Dan went bad, maybe even before that, when Marla had still been around telling him how special he was. "And we're here to rescue you." She shrugs, " **I'm** your friend, Jason's our pack mule."

"You're a riot Pokey, phenomenal." Jason grumbles back.

Eddie looks again at his strangely patterned arm, back to Rose, who's rough and unkept, but wholly human. To Jason who's lets out a satisfied, "Hn," when he retrieves a roll of something from the bag, nothing demonic about him. They don't break into cruel laughter, don't mock Eddie for his ill conceived stirrings of hope. Jason just tosses the roll at Rose. When she tears a piece off to slip between Eddie's lips it's dried fruit, sweet, and he's ravenous for the first thing he's eaten since the lukewarm oatmeal he'd had for breakfast on **that** day however long ago it had been.

Tears are falling from his eyes again, and, hard as it is, as it's always been for him to trust - only two and a half people in his life, he'd told Zach once, at some point in time he can't pin down now - there's a part of him deep, deep down, like a memory he brushing against the corners of his awareness, that tells him to trust them.

He makes the decision to listen to it, because even if it turns out that this whole thing is a hoax, even if in a few hours he finds himself back where he started, wondering and wandering all alone, the few hours in between, this hope he hasn't been allowed to feel in so, so long, this will mean it's worth it.

"Thank you." Eddie sniffs again, he swipes at the tears, not caring what the arm he does it with looks like, or what's going to happen to him even if he does get out.

Rose and Jason smile at him fondly, they make sure he eats over a conversation about whether or not he even needs it. They argue about where they're going first once they're back up top, about "Generation Outlaw" and Rose's father and a million other things Eddie doesn't understand, but that doesn't matter. Eddie lays with his head in Rose's lap while Jason stands guard at the mouth of there shelter, glowing blades that he brags could slice anything in the vicinity in two should it venture too near at the ready.

Eddie's feels safe, he feels wanted and even if this doesn't last, if he doesn't make it all the way back to Earth and it's this brief reprieve from his stay in literal Hell, this is enough of a rescue for him.


End file.
